BIRD ROOKERIES OP TORTUGAS BARTSCH. 471 



32, 810 



These rookeries were first brought to the attention of ornithologists 

 by John James Audubon, who, in his masterful ornithological biog- 

 raphies, gives us an account of a visit to these keys in May, 1832. 

 W. E. D. Scott, in his paper " On birds observed at the Dry Tor- 

 tugas, Florida, during parts of March and April, 1890," 3 gives us 

 the first list of birds noted in the group, while Dr. Joseph Thomp- 

 son, United States Navy, in 1903 described "The Tortugas tern 

 colony " in the fifth volume of Bird Lore. 4 



It is safe to state that the most intensive scrutiny to which a wild 

 bird colony has been subjected was made upon the birds of Bird Key 

 by Dr. John B. Watson, professor of experimental and comparative 

 psychology at the Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. K. S. Lashley, 

 w r hile a Johnston scholar in psychology at the same institution. 

 These gentlemen subjected the terns to exhaustive psychoanalyses with 

 the hope of throwing light on the problem of the homing instinct. In 

 getting at the basic data underlying this problem they found it 

 necessary to study the various phases of the activities displayed by 

 the birds in and about the island. The results of their splendid 

 efforts are embodied in a series of papers from which I shall take 

 the liberty to quote at some length. 5 e 



1 Based upon Doctor Watson's census of 1908. 



3 An estimate admitting two-fifths as many offspring as we had parents. 

 8 The Auk, vol. 7, pp. 301-314. 



4 Bird Lore, vol. 5, pp. 73-84. 



6 " The Behavior of Noddy and Sooty Terns," John B. Watson, Papers from the 

 Tortugas Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, vol. 2, No. 103, 1908, 

 pp. 189-255. 



" Homing and Related Activities of Birds," papers from the Dept. of Marine Biology 

 of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, vol. 7, No. 211. 



